Last Night at the Holiday Inn

by Brad Rose

The rain patters on the roof, like soft applause. I’m listening, closely. Very closely. Constant acceleration. You can hear the sky, swarming, shivering. Listen. Low altitude velocity. Before I know it, it’s just like fun. But harder to enjoy. In the next room, I hear laughter, like a little boat, bobbing. Just laughter. And at the end of my bed, my suitcase, small as a monosyllable. I’m only visiting. I can’t stay. Really, I can’t. Thank you. Goedel’s incompleteness theorem. Always something missing. The letter ‘J’ is not in the periodic table. What am I waiting for? Something tells me, it could get ugly. Something tells me, shut up and calculate. Something keeps telling me. Everything is ticking, the wallpaper, the air conditioner, the rain. Sharp, bright, ticking. I’m listening. It ticks faster. Nine bullets. By the time you read this, everything will be different. Nine Bullets. What am I waiting for? Everything will be different.

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Brad Rose was raised in southern California, about a mile from where the Apollo space capsules were built, and about 240,000 miles from the moon. He lives in Boston. Brad has obtained irrefutable evidence that the Tea Party is responsible for irreversible climate change (and he’s boiling mad about it.) Links to his poetry and fiction, which appear in print and on-line, appear at http://bradrosepoetry.blogspot.com